Running A 4guage Amp power wire from Battery to the trunk??
 

Im getting ready to install my new system, nothing big just a new head unit, a sub and amp, just curious if anyone has advice on running the power line, rca's? Most curious about the firewall, battery connection, and which side of the car would make this the easiest? I have a 03 Monte Ls.

passenger side through the grommit in the firewall, its in the how-to section, you should run your rcas on the drivers side, that way there wont be any interference.

you only need a couple inches to avoid any EMI from the power lines, they are low voltage.

anyways, the BEST place to run them, as far as i'm concearned is both through the center console, rca's on one side, power line on the other. bam done, now it can be a bitch to figuire out how to get the center console off, but once you do its pretty much a "duh" moment.

anyways, through that grommit, and you'll need to take your one coolant res. out , its pretty easy, 2 screwsx, it picks up and you can set it to the side, and that alows you to reach down and pull, there will be a little rubber you'll need to break through, but with 4 gauge you should be way good, i put some 1\0 through mine and it took some fighting but i got it.

I still dont understand the theory of running the wire through the center console. Its more than 10x easier to run it along the side of the car. Just remove the side plastic trim piece (it pulls right up) and walla easy access to under the carpet.

I have ZERO interference and noise. Power on passenger side. RCAs, remote, speaker wire ect... all ran on drivers side

agreed with you, the center counsel is pointless, just run it both sides. i have all of my rca wires on the drivers side with the speaker wires and my power wire on the passenger side and that helped clean up my interference.

High quality RCA do wonders. I upgraded to Rockford Fosgate Premium (RFIT is the model) help noise allot. Also try to AVOID running power cable and RCAs/Speaker wire parallel to each other especially when there close to each other.

^^^ thats why I ran my speaker wire for my passenger side door(although its hooked in series to the drivers side) on the drivers side to the front than across and over to the passenger door speaker, because than there not parallel to each other so since they cross it cancels noise interference

I also agree with jaws on this one... I have no problems with the power going down one side and the RCA's on the other side, just dont cheap out on the RCA's, thats the only advice I can give. But for ease of work, def run it down the sides

I can't speak for everyone but since I ran my power down the center console I'll explain.

When I wired up my doors I used 16ga Karma series speaker wire. The stuff is nice, but the strand for each speaker is about the size of an 8ga wire and I have two strands going to each door. And we all know that you aren't supposed to run power wire along with speaker wire, so I don't understand what you don't understand:confused:

But I didnt run speaker wire along with power wire. As explained in a previous post. The only time it even comes close is by the passenger door. But it runs perpendicular to it at just one point which is ok because then it doesn't pick up noise. That one spot is the only spot my power wire comes in contact with any other wire.

Also running along the sides of the car does also allow for maximum difference between the power wire and all other wire.

IDK just my theory of input and suggestion/simplicity...

really? high quality rca's make no difference i have had 80$ rca's and i've had 15$ rca's, whitch i have right now. copper is copper my friend, the only difference in those high quality rca's is they have EMI sheilding...if EMI isn't a problem. than why are you buying it? its like buying underground rated wire to run in walls...its better wire but the power is sitll the same.


and i just prefer the center console, he can feel free to run them under the carpet, i just don't like things floating around down there, plus god forbid you get any rust throughs down there, should you live in a state like PA, with such ****ty car conditions, you likly will see in a cars life span, you're talking about watter, rust, and sharp edges potentially touching that wire, center of the car is more reinforced and less likly to rust. that is my logic, but that's your call :) it's really not that hard, 1 screw for the main part, than 4 bolts and 1 screw hold down the rest.

Well I upgraded from JL standard to Rockford Fosgate Premium and there is so much of a deference in sound quality and noise its absolutely unbelievable. I can here notes that Ive never herd with the JL RCAs, its the little subtle things.

The power wire is more likely to get damaged in the engine area than it is once its in the cabin. Never been worried about running it were I did, ive always been more concerned about it in the engine area as I said. I always inspect it every time I check my oil.

Im running 0/1 gauge wire down the passenger side it was easy for me to go there & ran the RCAs down the drivers which seems to be what everyone does

really well where was eveyrone when i was asking for advice because the center console is the advice i got haha, and it's what i saw another member do. oh well is still prefer it there, less wire.


still you must of had a problem with your old rca's because you really shoudln't be able to hear a dif, def not a a substantial dif, if you heard a large dif, you had a grounding issue in your rca's.

Nobody is telling you that the way you did it is wrong or right so no need to explain or justify, I simply explained why I ran mine down the center console since so many of you were confused as to why.

If you're using wire that needs to be that far apart in order to prevent noise interference then i'm thinking you might want to use better wire. 6" of separation is plenty!

For the record, I am by no means saying that you WILL have noise if you run your power/signal cables alongside each other but based on how much work it takes to run the wires wouldn't you rather eliminate a POSSIBLE source of noise interference so you don't have to go through the hassle of rerouting your wires? It's the "Do it right the first time" train of thought, at least that's how I see it.

True story;)

Nope, not everyone;) But it works just the same:cool:

It really doesn't matter where it's ran, the main thing is that you try and keep the signal and power cables separated. Neither way is right or wrong, they both are an option and at the end of the day accomplish the same thing.

As most of you seen in my build log, I installed my bass knob on the side of my center console between my seat so the console was coming out regardless.

well another reason its better, one fish point, less carpet to fish, as aposed to the 15 inches you need to pull around the corner, unless you wanna pull out the back seat side paneling, or the 6-8" you pull both wires at the same time through if you use the center console. its all the same result though in the end. as long as you keep them apart.


let me explain something about EMI, for one, its much larger radiouse in AC (whitch you will not find in your car) also, high voltages, such as the 500 volts in a ballast of a light in a building will have a massive amount of EMI. 12 volts DC EMI is so small it's not even to be considered, now there is a bit of a lie to my story, the rca's and speaker wires "technicly" will be an altornating current (AC) since it's sending signals in waves, thought the polaritys never switch, power is power, ground is ground. the emi is larger, because the voltages may exceed 12v.

speaker wires are to be kept away from rca's i'd say double that you might worry about in a power line for the amp. even though the signal in the rca's is the same that comes out from the amp to the speakers, there is a delay and a difference in voltages, and if you send an interruption, you will have a muffled note, kind like pulling a couple 1's out of a byte being sent over a network line; you ask for purple, you get green. you're going to have ghost noise, or "white noise" coming through with your music. that is the result your avoiding. the concludes my lesson for the day :)

Point 1:

Im not saying you did it wrong

Point 2:

Im just backing up my way of doing

Point 3:

As you can see in my "rebuild" of my new system that I posted. I did do some rewire and I did not use cheap wire. At the moment all of my wire is top of the line Rockford Fosgate. Power wire will be top of the line 1/0 Stinger wire, just needs installed.

My theory about most things especially as it applies to car stereo in this case. Your system will sound as good as the weakest link. So as I kept upgrading to bigger and better things but, it can only get so good, as my speaker wire and RCAs were holding me back. I upgraded them and now its at its fullest potential and it sounds amazing.

But I do want to add that running your speakers in bridged to 8ohm for fronts as well as the rears on a JL slash amp makes a massive difference. I love that amp because you can run 4 ohm or 8ohm and not loose out put as most amps do. As long as channels 1 and 2 are the same ohm as 3 and 4.

I do resize some of this material on this thread is NA to what the OP wanted ;) lol

Yeah, the slash series amps have a regulated intelligent power supply so they'll do rated power at 11v+ and impedances between 3 and 8 ohms per channel when bridged.

Are you the same guy who had the 6x9's playing mids only and the fronts playing highs only?

I realize you ran your amp in bridged mode to get more power out of it but don't understand why you'd want to run your left and right speakers on one channel, totally eliminating your L/R stereo separation. But if you're that same guy, no explanation needed;)

NO i dont think im that guy lol.

But the main reason I did it is my HU runs fronts and the other out put is on Rear/Sub which I wanted on SUB. So basically the HU thinks its just fronts but I have it playing front and rear. So I have taken the 2 channel and then y split it at the amp so it plugs into the amp correctly and gets full power. SO after all that it was senseless to try and have them on individual channels if the HU doesnt think it is anyway

And obviously the True fronts are on channels 1 an 2 and the true rears are on 3 and 4. So it can be tuned right on the amp

you don't have fading with that set up though :( you should really get a better deck, with T\A ;) trust me once you use time alignment, you'll never wanna go back. takes a long time to tune in though, plus you have to train your ears to hear the delays, whitch took me a long time.

the speakers wires were never holding you back...unless they were to small, you don't seem to understand these things literly make no difference, if you heard a difference, like i said, your old rca's likley had a bad ground in them.

Well those RCAs were about 3.5 years old if that makes any diff.

Horrible way to run a system. You really should get a deck with 6ch rca's so you can run it like it should be run, the SQ improvement by doing so will be dramatic, far more dramatic than the one you noticed by changing rca's and you'll have more control over the sound than you do now. Not to mention that splitting the rca's like that via Y adapter essentially halves the rca voltage, resulting in a dirtier signal and causing the amp to work that much harder. I really think you should have a new head unit at the top of your list of things to buy for your system, seriously.

Im probably going to put in the Rockford Fosgate 3sixty.2 sound processor in anyway once everything in my new system is in.

I believe I did note that in my "new system" thread

I don't know how that will work, but hopefully it will. Have you looked in to it? Reason I ask is because i'm curious as to how the 360 can get a front input only, and then turn it into front and rear. But then again, I know the 360 has gobs of tuning options so surely you'd be setting everything up from it anyway so it might just work out. And for the record, I will be jealous if/when you get that in, it's a nice piece:cool:

it can i believe, but a ms-8 will be much better at such a thing ;) at only a cool 700$ but hey it's def worth it if you put the time into the wiring, the biggest hasle it is , is the wiring.

Once again the forum to the rescue!!! Thanks everybody for the advise, If i would have took the time to search the how to section my questions would be answered..

Sorry we went a bit off topic lol. But that always seems to happen especially in the audio/visual section..